The first article ended with a question: “What is missing from this map?” After looking at Takaichi’s foreign policy from six vantage points — the United States, Europe, Australia, South Korea, China and Southeast Asia — we now shift our gaze toward peace organizations, alternative media and critical analysis. IPB, Democracy Now!, Le Monde diplomatique, Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Policy in Focus and CounterPunch do not form a single bloc. The question is simpler: from another vantage point, what becomes visible — and what may instead escape our view?
Does stronger deterrence really mean greater security?
In mainstream debate, if Chinese military pressure grows, it is generally considered rational for Japan to strengthen its defense and cooperation with allies. The logic of deterrence is simple: make a potential attack too costly or unlikely to succeed, thereby discouraging the adversary from attempting it. On this premise, military buildup is presented as a way to strengthen deterrence.
Peace-oriented readings, however, question the causal chain. In December 2025, the IPB criticized both Takaichi’s remarks on Taiwan and Chinese military activities around Okinawa, calling for de-escalation, dialogue and renewed economic and cultural ties. If Japan arms because it sees China as a threat, while Beijing interprets that buildup as Japanese militarization, each side’s reaction can confirm the other’s fears and fuel further rearmament: the security dilemma. Are stronger deterrence and greater security really the same thing?
Not only the risk of abandonment, but also of entrapment
In the U.S.-Japan alliance, mainstream debate focuses above all on the risk that an unpredictable America might “abandon” Japan. Peace-oriented readings highlight the opposite risk: being “entrapped” in American wars.
In March 2026, when Trump asked Japan to send ships to the Strait of Hormuz, Takaichi invoked the limits of domestic law. World BEYOND War argued that Japan should not go beyond its Constitution and laws to answer Washington. Ria Shibata, writing in Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, shows Article 9 functioning as a constitutional brake. In that sense, it can also be read as a kind of “firewall” against automatic participation in an ally’s wars. Evaluating an alliance therefore requires considering both abandonment and entrapment.
Seeing “militarization” as a single process
Democracy Now! described the easing of restrictions on arms exports as another shift away from postwar pacifism. Le Monde diplomatique, meanwhile, places Takaichi in continuity with the Abe era, citing security legislation, military buildup, Taiwan and changes surrounding Article 9.
The question thus becomes less “Is Takaichi a hawk?” and more “Where is Japanese security policy heading?” This long-term perspective matters: individual measures may look limited, but when connected they can reveal an overall direction.
The nuclear question, still in the background
In the first article, nuclear issues were not a central criterion. Reporting on the 2026 Nagasaki commemoration, Democracy Now! linked the mayor’s criticism of nuclear deterrence to Takaichi’s military policy. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists examined nuclear sharing in Japan and South Korea alongside U.S. extended deterrence, long-range strike capabilities and the Three Non-Nuclear Principles (not possessing, not producing and not permitting the introduction of nuclear weapons).
The question is not only whether Japan will possess nuclear weapons, but how far a non-nuclear country will deepen its dependence on nuclear deterrence. Not possessing nuclear weapons and not placing the nuclear threat at the center of national security are not the same thing.
What counts as “security capacity” beyond military force?
John Feffer, writing in Foreign Policy in Focus, proposes that Japan and South Korea develop “non-military security” through clean energy, critical-mineral supply chains, disaster cooperation and climate technologies.
This brings to mind “human security”: since the 1990s, it has placed at the center not only states and territory, but people living free from “fear” and “want”, with dignity. Japan long treated it as a pillar of its diplomacy. It may be discussed less today, but climate change, pandemics, disasters, energy, food and poverty show that it has lost none of its importance. Stable energy, diversified supplies, cooperation on disasters and climate crises, and economic and human ties that keep channels of dialogue open are also security capacities. Can a state’s security really be measured only by military strength?
But peace-oriented and alternative perspectives have blind spots too
It would be easy to conclude that this is “the right” reading. It is not. CounterPunch, for example, strongly criticizes Japanese remilitarization and U.S. strategy toward China, but pays less attention to China’s military buildup and pressure on Taiwan in their own right. If we see only how Japan and the United States feed the security dilemma, while underestimating how Chinese actions generate insecurity among neighboring countries, we simplify causality in the opposite direction.
The IPB offers a useful contrast: it criticizes Takaichi, but also treats Chinese military activities as a factor in escalation. It is therefore not enough to question the assumptions of deterrence, nor to treat those of pacifism as truth: we need to overlay what both perspectives see and what they leave out.
Overlaying the two maps
The first map showed alliance, autonomy, regional order, history, the political basis of China-Japan relations and Southeast Asia’s room for choice. The second adds the security dilemma, the risks of abandonment and entrapment, Article 9 as constraint and firewall, nuclear dependence and non-military capacities. These are not competing criteria: they measure different aspects of security.
Only by overlaying the two maps does our view of Takaichi widen. But another blank space appears.
And toward a word that has nearly disappeared
In peace-oriented media and organizations, terms such as “de-escalation”, “dialogue”, “common security” and “risk reduction” recur. Yet a word capable of bringing these tools together under a broader goal appears far less often: deliberately reducing, over the medium and long term, the overall level of tension and hostility between adversaries.
A word was once commonly used for this: “détente”, or easing of tensions. Why has it moved away from the center of security discourse? And when judging “good diplomacy”, should we not also consider the ability to achieve a sustained reduction in tensions with an adversary, alongside military buildup, alliances and the defense of national interests?
The next article will start from this nearly vanished word and ask about the criteria by which we measure “good diplomacy” itself.
Main sources
- International Peace Bureau (IPB), “IPB Calls for De-escalation and Dialogue between Japan and China” (16.12.2025)
- World BEYOND War, David Swanson, “Japan Should Not Violate Laws for the United States” (19.03.2026)
- Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Ria Shibata, “The Protest and the Supermajority: Japanese Pacifism, Generational Renegotiation, and the Coming Constitutional Reckoning” (06.05.2026)
- Democracy Now!, “Japan Abandons Ban on Weapons Exports in Latest Shift from Postwar Pacifism” (21.04.2026)
- Le Monde diplomatique, Renaud Lambert, “Japan’s dangerous game with China” (02.2026)
- CounterPunch, KJ Noh, “Japan’s Remilitarization is a Danger to the World” (12.01.2026)
- Democracy Now!, “Nagasaki Mayor Warns Against Nuclear Weapons as Japan Marks 81 Years Since Atomic Bombing” (10.08.2026)
- Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Hua Han, “US nuclear sharing in Asia and its implications for regional security” (03.06.2026)
- Foreign Policy in Focus, John Feffer, “Japan and South Korea: An Alliance of Middle Powers?” (17.06.2026)
* Text based on publicly available materials through 6 September 2026.